Lalah Hathaway: Musical Daughter Makes Her Own Mark

Lalah Hathaway:
Musical Daughter Makes Her Own Mark

By Richard Harrington

At the start of the '90s, Lalah Hathaway looked to be R&B's next shining star. She was blessed with an amazing, assured voice -- deep, rich, flexible -- as well as a legacy, as the daughter of soul legend Donny Hathaway. Her 1990 self-titled debut earned critical acclaim and yielded the hits "Heaven Knows," "Baby Don't Cry" and "I'm Coming Back," but it would be four more years before her label, Virgin, followed up with the album "A Moment."

But that moment, too, seemed to pass, and when sales stalled, Virgin dropped the singer. It would be a decade before Hathaway released her next solo album, 2004's "Outrun the Sky."

What Hathaway really had outrun were the limitations put on a singer who casually straddled such categories as soul, hip-hop, gospel, pop and smooth jazz. As Hathaway sees it, the music industry, and particularly the black music industry, has a hard time figuring out how to promote artists who don't fit neatly into one category.

"It's all music to me," Hathaway insists, adding: "I've always recognized that I'm somewhat different as a musician and singer because I understand that [mine is] a singular voice -- it's my voice and nobody else has it. Doesn't make me any better than anyone else, just makes me singular."

And popular with other singers: Hathaway's credits include more than 100 recordings and concert appearances with such artists as Marcus Miller, Mary J. Blige, Al Jarreau, Stevie Wonder, Dizzy Gillespie, Meshell Ndegeocello and Chaka Khan. "The Song Lives On," a 1999 duet album with legendary Crusaders' pianist Joe Sample, was a pop-jazz masterpiece.

But Hathaway longed for her own testament and finally delivered with "Outrun the Sky," which for the first time featured original material, some of it dating to her Virgin days, when her contributions were minimized.

"I wasn't able to express myself," Hathaway says. "It was more the record company deciding we've got this producer and this producer, and this is what we need to put together."

The songs on Hathaway's "Outrun the Sky," produced by Mike City (Gerald Levert, Yolanda Adams, Carl Thomas), are about growing up, coming into her own and learning to deal with both the joys and the sorrows of life. They are as diverse as the acoustic, guitar-driven pop rocker "Stronger," the bluesy "Admit It," a gospel-tinted "We Were 2"and the country-flavored "If U Ever." The song "Boston" (where Hathaway lived while attending Berklee College of Music) is about personal growth, while the title cut is about survival, literally. The song, written during a bumpy flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, finds Hathaway dreaming out loud about finishing the flight and making good on all her goals; it's dedicated to her father.

"The record is definitely a lot more personal," Hathaway says. "I feel like I have a lot more ownership of it, in a way. I've been able to be involved at every level, from the artwork to the way the record's presented and what songs I like and the order of the songs. All three of the records I've put out have been my records, but this one felt more intentional .

"It's not necessarily revelation as much as personal expression," she adds. "The real thing about it is to allow yourself to be vulnerable, to let that come, and that is what I'm working on."

In many ways, it's something Hathaway has been working on her entire life. The eldest of two daughters of classically trained artists -- her mother, Eulaulah, as a singer, and her father, Donny, a gospel prodigy and later one of soul music's most revered figures -- Hathaway started piano lessons at age 3, though she has always identified records and radio as her primary teachers.

Given the current glories of her voice, it's surprising that in high school, she was never encouraged to sing and was in fact discouraged. She said teachers dismissed her husky contralto as "too dark and heavy."

"I went to a classically safe music-program school," Hathaway says of her high school in Chicago. "In their ears and in their estimation, my voice wasn't right to sing classical music. That's probably true, to an extent, and it's also subjective, but that is part of the reason I chose to go to Berklee, because I knew I didn't fit in at a Juilliard or American Conservatory [of Music]. I wanted to go somewhere where I could stretch out a bit. It all worked out.

"I'd told my mom when I was 16 I wanted to go to Berklee and I really wanted to try and sing jazz, and I remember her saying, 'You don't just sing jazz, people don't just do that,' and I remember thinking, 'Really?' I didn't have a concept of that at that age. I still had my Janet Jackson records and the records I grew up listening to, but I was starting to go in the direction of Pat Metheny and Weather Report, toward fusion, which kind of led me into jazz.

"In my mind, there's not really a separation," she says of genre distinctions, quickly adding, "My foundation is absolutely soul music, rhythm and blues music."

Early on, Hathaway decided she didn't want to be "just a singer" but a complete musician, and Berklee proved invaluable. "I met a lot of great musicians, and the musician I am was informed by that. It only helped me to hone my craft. Not so much the formal education process, but keeping my ears open and educating my ear. It can't do anything but help you be more well-rounded."

Hathaway signed with Virgin during her sophomore year at Berklee and made "Lalah Hathaway" over the spring break before she graduated. Bassist Marcus Miller heard demos of the album and invited her to join his band; she has continued to record and tour with Miller the past 15 years and appears on eight of his albums.

Miller was also instrumental in bringing Hathaway to "Forever, For Always, For Luther," the acclaimed Luther Vandross tribute album in 2004. Hathaway's version of "Forever, For Always, For Love" earned her a No. 1 urban adult contemporary single -- her first (it's also on "Outrun the Sky"). In Vandross's video for his final hit, "Dance With My Father," a ballad of yearning for a lost loved one, Hathaway and her sister, Kenya, appear briefly holding a picture of their father.

"I never got to meet Luther," Hathaway says, "but Marcus worked so closely with him, and knowing so many people who worked and sang with him, I felt like I knew him." As for the star-studded tribute album, "I'm really happy that they did it before Luther passed away, and I'm happy that he was able to hear it."

Sadly, that's something that Donny Hathaway was never able to do: Lalah was only 9 when her father, who struggled for many years with depression, leapt to his death at age 33 from the 15th-floor window of a New York hotel Jan. 13, 1979. Hathaway is remembered for his smash '70s duets with Roberta Flack ("Where Is the Love," "Back Together Again" and "The Closer I Get to You") and such classics as "The Ghetto" and "Someday We'll All Be Free," and his impassioned vocal style has been a major influence on the neo-soul movement and on new generations of fans here and abroad.

"At a concert in Pori, Finland, a couple of years ago, there were 15-year-old kids with Donny Hathaway records; it's crazy," Hathaway marvels. Ironically, Lalah and Donny Hathaway both had new albums out in 2004 (his was "These Songs for You, Live!").

Hathaway occasionally performs some of her father's landmark songs in concert, and she recorded "Someday We'll All Be Free" with Take 6 on that group's "Beautiful World" album. Although she looks very much her father's daughter, Hathaway doesn't really sound much like him, and she has avoided any "Back Together Again" beyond-the-grave duet overtures.

"I saw Natalie Cole do that live, and I love that record," Hathaway says of "Unforgettable," the electronically created duet between Cole and her long-departed father, Nat "King" Cole. "I've even talked to her about the process of how she did it and what that was like. But for me right now at this point in my history, it doesn't seem like a really natural thing to do. It's kind of a conversation that never really occurred and would only occur for salacious ears."

Hathaway is more open to the idea of a Donny Hathaway covers album by her and sister Kenya, who sings and plays guitar and percussion with the "American Idol" and VH1's "Divas" bands and tours with George Benson. ("She's the hardest-working woman in show business," says her admiring sister.)

Meanwhile, Hathaway reports that she is working on an Earth, Wind & Fire tribute album and is "getting ready to start on the next record, conceptualizing what it will be."

"It's going to be interesting to work on a record from start to finish in one time period, which I have never really done. Some of the songs on 'Outrun the Sky,' like 'Boston' and 'We Were Two,' were written in 1991 and 1992 when I moved to California. It's going to be interesting to just write where I am right now -- kind of a scary process and very exciting."

Lalah Hathaway and Eric Benet Appearing Monday and Tuesday at the Warner Theatre Sound: Sophisticated soul and smooth jazz top the menu, but Hathaway's side dishes are as wide-ranging as they are tasty.

2/9/06

Source: The Washington Post

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